The following picture was taken of a recent absentee ballot sent out to about 300 residents of Rensselaer County, New York.

Notice something wrong there? Your eyes aren’t deceiving you, that does actually say “Barack Osama“. I’m willing to accept the word of the officials responsible for this that it was indeed accidental, but there’s just no way that this was a simple wrong key press. “S” and “B” are no where near each other on the keyboard – you don’t even type them with the same finger. Someone clearly was thinking Osama when they typed his name and typed it wrong without realized that their id had overpowered their conscious mind. That happens. There are plenty of times when I’ve wanted to type one word and my mind just typed out something else, but I always catch it with good old fashioned proofreading.

So what’s the lesson to be learned here? With something as important as a Presidential election ballot – especially in the shadow of the 2000 election fraud that elected George W. Bush – any and every ballot being shipped out to early voters or presented to them at the voting booth should be thoroughly proofread by multiple officials.